April 17, 2023

China has put the US in the "too hard" basket

Keep Calm and Carry On posters should be put up in all Canberra government departments. The British Ministry of Information produced the original of this meme in 1939 to prevent public panic about widely predicted German air attacks. A new version is needed in Australia in 2023 to counter fears of imminent invasion and subversion by China.

May 30, 2021

Of bars, prosthetic legs and statements that are no longer operable

Whether General Angus Campbell was aware of the “Fat Ladies Arm” bar or not, fact is, it was allowed to operate, and its mere existence points to a broken culture within the ADF.

January 21, 2021

Cruelty as policy in Australia and elsewhere: a short list of 2020s' victims

Political cultures also foster sadism, justifying such behaviour by an alleged need to protect national security. And once specific population groups have been dehumanised, they become targets for cruelties.

January 19, 2021

Forget the insurrection as a teaching opportunity

Heres to betting that impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump prove a political disaster for the US and the Democrats; that Trumpism emerges more popular than ever; and that the drift towards the disintegration of the republic continues.

January 14, 2021

Media concentration in Australia and the Murdoch damage

_It is important that any arrangements made for Facebook/Google/Twitter to pay media companies for content are made transparently and equally available to ALL online media publishers who meet (a very low) bar and wish to participate.No government should ever facilitate the handing over of money to tax shy oligopolies.

January 7, 2021

Sinophobia as a political weapon

Morality racketeering is Australian academic Dr Ian Wilsons shorthand for Indonesian white-clad mobsters who dress in religious righteousness to terrorise their animus-du-jour. Last century it was vice. More recently its been blasphemers.Now its the government of President Joko Widodo.

September 23, 2024

On war crimes and Western hypocrisy

The death toll has risen to 12 from Israel’s terror attack in Lebanon on Tuesday which detonated explosive materials hidden in thousands of pagers. Another 20 people were then killed in another attack on Wednesday with a second wave of explosions, this time using walkie talkies and home solar energy systems.

June 30, 2023

Wagner and China: The final curtain or an encore still to come?

For a few days, China, like the rest of the world, was transfixed by the Wagner Groups tactical advance on Moscow, threatening the stability of the Russian government and the rule of President Vladimir Putin before the challenge collapsed suddenly.

April 4, 2022

The new republic model

There were two major reasons the 1999 Republic Referendum, (I ran the Yes case for Malcolm Turnbull and the Australian Republican Movement (ARM)), disappointed those Australians who believe the head of state should by one of us.

September 29, 2021

John Menadue: From deputy sheriff to the 51st state of the Union

Paul Keating put it succinctly yesterday in The Sydney Morning Herald that we are selling our country to another power. Or, as former ambassador John McCarthy put it, “we are moving from being a country with the self-respect of true independence”.

August 8, 2021

Not good enough, Premier Berejiklian

The NSW outbreak of delta infections is worse after six weeks of lockdown. As I am sure is true for many readers, I am frustrated today by the obvious loopholes in our current lockdown.

December 28, 2020

Big Four banks still lending money to gamblers

The Big 4 banks ANZ, Westpac, CommBank and NAB continue to lend people money to gamble with. You cant get a personal loan from a bank to use for gambling. So how is gambling a permitted purpose for a credit card? On what planet would that be considered responsible lending?

November 16, 2020

The Biden Presidency and China: past, present, and future danger

The global sigh of relief that marked the end of the Trump era is hardly surprising. But Bidens ascendancy warrants scrutiny, especially when we look at US-Sino relations and the potential for regional and global conflict.

October 13, 2020

Britain facing two potential devastations

Britain is facing two devastations in short order - a further surge in coronavirus cases; and achieving coherence from its imminent departure from the EU. Both will have deleterious effects on future economic growth, though long term from Brexit more so than the virus.

October 5, 2024

The Labor Party has lost its way

The Labor Party is a long way from done but at the moment it is mired in mediocrity. We need a Labor Party agenda in which the big issues are confronted, writes Bill Kelty.

July 23, 2024

War, words and denial

Eighty-six years ago Europe’s Jews suffered the most catastrophic event in their history, ending in a systematic, industrial-scale slaughter. Six million was the body count, its physical manifestation. But the Shoah, or Holocaust, as it is also known, delivered a psychic wound that cannot be so easily measured. Nor has it ever truly healed.

June 26, 2024

A child in Gaza

A silent consequence of the horrifying hostilities taking place in Gaza is the long-term behavioural impairments for the children who, the United Nations estimate, make up 40% of the casualties.

April 12, 2024

The lobbying scourge

The major obstacle to lobbying reform is that for members of parliament, their staff and senior officials, lobbying provides a very lucrative income when they leave parliament, the military or the public service. So they refuse to act on the lobbying scourge.

August 31, 2022

Bidens China policy, US business and Australia

Washingtons concern about China is real and not just threat inflation, which seeks an enemy to promote military Keynesianism: the traditional method of transferring public money to private corporations in the military industrial sector.

May 19, 2022

The Dominoes are falling fast. We face a climate emergency

The belated release of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authoritys Reef snapshot: summer 2021-22 has exposed the Federal governments insistence that the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is not endangered as the lie it has always been.

April 10, 2022

Children overboard

_Despite accumulated evidence published in this journal and more broadly of gross and growing inequality in Australia’s schools funding arrangements, this did not rate a mention in the Coalition’s Budget nor feature in responses to it from Labor.

February 13, 2021

Australia: Clinging to a declining and aggressive US. An updated repost

Declining empires never go gracefully. And neither will the US empire addicted as it is to a belief in its exceptionalism and its grounding in aggression both at home and abroad.

The attack on the US Capitol reminds us how fragile our ally is. The civil war is unfinished business.Western media have sought to minimise this constitutional crisis- a democratic blip and nothing more!

Joe Biden will smooth a few rough edges but he wont do much to arrest the decline. He will keep telling us that ‘America is back’ and leading again!

January 25, 2021

Victors of colonial terrorism, disguised as civilised democracy, get to write the story

Just as Israels Independence Day and the Palestinian Nakba Day, in remembrance of deportation and deadly dispossession, have a bloody symbiosis, Australia Day/Invasion Day is celebrated or mourned according to the victors or the vanquished.

December 21, 2020

The global effort by anti-vaxxers to destroy confidence in Covid-19 vaccines

With the global effort to immunise 8 billion people leaving the station the challenges involved are immense.

December 12, 2020

Faithful and Labor: What Labor Ignores at its Peril

The history of the ALP at the national level is one long lesson in humility. More often defeated than victorious, glorious in government but only in retrospect. This is our party.

August 18, 2024

Environment: NSW’s environmental assessment process for logging ignores the previous 200 years

Ignoring 200 years of native forest logging underestimates the consequences of current logging. Beware of false solutions for plastic pollution. How to make your garden bird-friendly.

May 13, 2024

The journey and the destination: Colin Mackerras and China

Right now, knowledge and understanding of China and its culture, its people and its history could help get relations back on a sound footing, but sadly teaching and research in schools and universities has fallen to a critically low level.

August 21, 2023

AUKUS gets embedded but no clear rationale

Labor has its political fix on national security. But what has been deferred once more is a fully developed explanation of the policy in real defence and strategic terms.

July 29, 2023

A growing string of Pearls and just as many Irritations: P&I needs your support

In 2017, Pearls and Irritations had a half a million views. By the end of 2022 we had more than 5.3 million views and we have already surpassed 3.3 million views heading into the second half of 2023. We receive more than 400,000 monthly views, and frequently many more.

September 7, 2022

What a contrast in professionalism and civility. The 7/30 Report

You have to admire the PRC Ambassador, Xiao Qian. After the uncivil behaviour, and gotcha questioning, and the visible personal animus journalists gave him at the National Press Club four weeks ago, hed have been forgiven if he declined to make himself available to speak to Australian media for a while. Or at least, if he did so, only on agreed terms of civility.

July 16, 2022

The unconscionable prosecution of Bernard Collaery was an assault on the values Australia holds dear

Last week Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus put an end to Canberra lawyer Bernard Collaerys criminal prosecution.

July 29, 2021

Gareth Evans rubbishes the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme: Loyal and Patriotic Australians should follow his lead.

Gareth Evans robust public rejection of a suggestion from Attorney-Generals Department that he should consider whether he has “registration obligations under the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme” (i.e., should register himself as an agent of foreign influence) is highly commended.

May 25, 2021

A national disgrace: the National Archives turns to crowdfunding to save irreplaceable historic records

This week marks one year since the High Court handed down its landmark decision in the Palace letters case that lettersbetween the Queen and the Governor-General Sir John Kerr are considered public documents, ending the Queens embargo and leading the Archives to release them. In what I described then as a moment of “legal colonial upstart-ery”, the High Court had broken through the barrier of royal secrecy which shields royal actions from public view and from history, something no other Commonwealth nation has yet achieved**.**

January 28, 2021

Scotty ('Holidays') Morrison and <i>that</i> affair with Donald

It was the sign that got me in. Little Johnny & the Trumpettes, here tonight. I have been following this nostalgia band of old, once powerful white men as they slowly gig their way through the RSL club network of country New South Wales.

December 27, 2020

Sinophobia as a political weapon

Morality racketeering is Australian academic Dr Ian Wilsons shorthand for Indonesian white-clad mobsters who dress themselves in religious righteousness to terrorise their animus-du-jour. Last century it was vice. More recently its been blasphemers. Now its the government of President Joko Widodo.

November 5, 2020

US leading Australia on China

Many of our political and thought leaders in Australia seem in the past couple of years to have followed the US into a mindset that de facto China is the enemy. It seems a very uncomfortable position for Australia, given our massive economic reliance on China and the large Chinese diaspora in Australia.

March 3, 2020

JACK WATERFORD. Covid-19 no need to panic yet.

The risks are two-fold, First would be in neglecting an attack on the virus in our neighbourhood. The other is from an officious overreach of power by the department of Home Affairs and its armed Border Force officers.

September 13, 2024

Palestine defines us

The citizenry of past nations engaged in genocide woke up each morning focused on their challenges of everyday life, not those of the people their rulers were butchering. The victims may have been across continents or within the same population, and so awareness of the slaughter varied, but propaganda and dehumanisation were the ever-present balm for uneasy consciences and political cover. Those who rose above the brainwashing were limited in their ability to challenge their rulers, and faced consequences — often brutal — if they did.

August 13, 2024

What stands in the way of a nuclear weapon-free world?

Stronger treaties are needed more than ever as Hiroshima marks A-bomb anniversary.

August 7, 2024

Ramos-Horta visit to Beijing pushes against US pressure, omits Greater Sunrise

On 29 July, 2024, Dr José Ramos-Horta, President of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste met in Beijing with Chinese People’s Republic President Xi Jinping to upgrade the relationship between the two countries to “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership”. On the one hand Ramos Horta punctured Canberra fears of a Timor-Leste – China Security Agreement, but on the other, the Timorese leader firmly rejected US and Australian pressure about the status of Taiwan.

April 27, 2024

Creating a liveable, equitable world

A call to women to put social needs, not just economic needs, back on the political agenda.

August 15, 2023

Our government is about to redefine us as willing backers of US militarism - Anthony Albanese in earlier days

_At the height of the Cold War, Prime Minister Menzies agreed to the British request for a permanent site to test nuclear weapons This was a political decision by a government that was subservient to the British government, and today there are parallels, with the Australian government being once again subservient to the decisions of a foreign power. Our government is about to redefine us in the eyes of the world as willing backers of US militarism. - Anthony Albanese, 2003.

September 25, 2022

Pearls and Irritations adds language translations to its string

We want to speak your language.

September 10, 2022

The Defence Strategic Review: the greatest threat to Australias security arises from its uncritical attachment to the United States

The Defence Strategic Review, or the Porcupine Strategy, cannot ignore the reality that the greatest threat to Australias security arises from its uncritical attachment to the United States, and to the assumption that the US will persist as a reliable and rational partner into the future.

August 23, 2021

Premier Berejiklian, please stop thinking about easing of restrictions after 6 million jabs

There have been many mistakes in many countries hindering efforts to control the COVID-19 pandemic. None has been more counterproductive than the premature easing of public health containment initiatives. Time and time again this has breathed new life into infections by the SARS-Cov-2 virus. This is especially so when dealing with the Delta variant.

December 2, 2020

Why 2050 is too darned late

One and a half million people are already dead, mostly because their governments did not act on sound medical advice about Covid in a sufficient amount of time.

November 19, 2020

Opening up Australia to international travel All froth and no bubble!

Since April, a variety of coronavirus travel bubbles involving Australia have been mooted. But will any of them take off?

July 19, 2024

The attempt to smear and silence Mary Kostakidis is both shocking and alarming

For those of us familiar with Mary Kostakidis’ untiring work for justice and human rights, the news that she has been accused of antisemitism beggars belief. And the attempt to silence her has alarming implications for all of us. That this is supposedly done to safeguard social cohesion in our multicultural Australia is difficult to believe. In fact, it will have the opposite of the claimed effect.

May 22, 2024

Living in fear: Can Australia protect its citizens from our dangerous American ally?

The Extradition hearing of Dan Duggan, an Australian citizen and father of six who has been held in solitary confinement for 19 months in breach of U.N. conventions at the request of the United States, will be held this Friday in a Magistrate’s Court in Sydney.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal